Curators are not getting paid. Curators volunteer to make Inaturalist better, and they are not doing it to earn financial benefit. There are a few toxic and reckless users on Inaturalist, and more could come around, but the curators have a personable attitude on Inaturalist to benefit the Inaturalist community. There are 3.2 million Inaturalist accounts registered, 1.3 million of them have made an observation, 125,000 of them have made an identification, but only about 900 people have been given curator status. Some people on Inaturalist that should be curator are not made curator, and some people that should not be curator achieve that rank. But the most majority have been placed at that rank for a virtuous, moral, and ethical attitude, and having knowledge in a specific taxa. I am going to use some of my background information to add on to this. First, I am a 22 year old, and I live on Long Island. I have 2800 observations and 50000 identifications and counting. I have an expertise in Saxifragales(saxifrages, stonecrops, sweetgums, laurel-leafs, and allies), and I am learning about new taxa everyday. If there is someone out there that is within the 13-17 year old age range that has an expertise in a specific taxa, and has shown high ranks throughout Inaturalist, I think they can at least be considered, if not be righteously honored to the curator status. I have asked to become curator, and I bet many other great people, especially the 13-17 age group that has the expertise to become curator. 1 out of every 3556 people is a curator on Inaturalist, but we can make the rank better.
Thanks,
Iva
To me this should be a red flag, regarding anyone (regardless of their age) who does or has previously indicated this as a reason why they want the role. It demonstrates either an unawareness, or perhaps worse an unwillingness to work within one of the fundamental principles of the site and a possible focus on implementing unilateral changes which can cause significant technical and/or community disruption.
I am talking about the angry behaviour that curators occasionally have to deal with when dealing with the taxonomic side of things. These don’t always come in public comments; sometimes they come as personal messages.
I’m not sure that we need to label people as junior curators in their profiles. But perhaps behind the scenes (as it were) it would be known that the person was being mentored.
I don’t know how to deal with people posing as what they are not. There are a few curators who don’t use any identifying information at all, and they don’t seem to have broken the site yet. 
In a workplace this would fall under harassment policy. Presumably iNat has one and if not it needs one. Nobody, regardless of age, should be expected to deal with sociopaths on their own.
Dealing with difficult, unreasonable and nasty people is a fact of life. By the time a person is out of 8th grade they have a fairly clear view of the range of human unpleasantness. I survived high school, in spite of being bookish and small, with some pretty clear insights into how miserable people can be to each other and I expect that that environment hasn’t changed much. My skin got thicker, with time my empathy for the pain behind much of that sort of bad behaviour got deeper and eventually I got a handle on what the limits are if bad behaviour isn’t to poison a community. Learning to identify its variants and deal with it is a life skill that is picked up by doing it.
On Wikipedia, some of the highest levels of responsibility are held by teenagers who have proven themselves to be knowledgable and responsible. And I would say that the worst behaved administrators on Wikipedia are typically older men, not the teenagers. There are definitely some gifted youngsters out there that we would benefit from inviting to help curate. A more reasonable age limit for curators would probably be 13.
While I think all requests should be listened and responded to, I kind of feel it needs to be a very special circumstance for it to be granted to anyone under 16.
I also feel that the ability of curators to make any other person a curator should be turned off. I know it is there but its use discouraged. But it is open to both abuse and peer pressure for a decision that really should be made by the site staff.
It was actually an opinion, but whatever. I thought that’s what people wanted these days. Was Equality. Guess not.
I respect your opinion. I was just explaining why we have curators, and why we will most likely not get rid of them.
It’s not equality, it’s anarchy, curators are those who willingly do things to help other users, with everyone having the same abilities we would have a mess, not a taxonomic system, everyone would change it how they liked and it would lead to nothing but problems of using the wesite.
If this is to be a scientific resource, then yes, adults only please. A child does not yet have a fully developed mind. That’s why we don’t let them vote.
“iNaturalist is a lot of different things, but at it’s core, iNaturalist is an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature…However, despite the fact that iNat can be a bit technical and seems scientific, our primary goal in operating iNaturalist is to connect people to nature…It’s NOT a science project.”
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/what+is+it
iNat is a science resource, but its main goal is connecting people with nature. If youth can help achieve this goal, I don’t see why they should be limited.
Well, we let them drive at 16. And they can babysit our kids for 8hrs legally at 13. They can legally work in several businesses at 14. I think that, sure, it may not be fully developed, but it is probably developed enough for this, especially if they show responsibility and respect.
This discussion is going a bit far afield, and I think my question was answered really well, so I’m going to close the topic. Conclusions:
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there’s a consensus that a hard age limit should not be used when deciding whether someone should be made a curator on iNat, but it should be taken into account along with the more important criteria such as expertise with iNat, solid decision making and behavior, and attention to detail.
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some people have suggested perhaps a mentoring relationship between a younger curator and a more, er, “life experienced” one. While I think that’s interesting and useful, I’m not sure staff have the bandwidth to set up something formal for that.
This is something I’ve been working on, and started a discussion about it [here](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/should-site-curators-be-allowed-to-make-another-user-a-curator/5308 a whlie ago), if anyone wants to weigh in. If implemented, I’d like to set up a formal curator application form that will streamline the “process” (such as it is) and that tells people up front what being a curator actually entails.